Nicole Virzi
Introduction
Nicole Virzi is a 32-year-old UC San Diego doctoral student who was weeks away from earning her degree when she pleaded guilty to killing her former best friend’s six-week-old son and injuring the baby’s twin brother during a 2024 visit to the family’s Pittsburgh home . On October 28, 2026, Virzi took a plea deal to third-degree homicide in the death of Leon Katz and to injuring his twin, admitting in open court record to the acts she had confessed to detectives in a 13-hour interrogation . She has been ordered to serve a minimum of 35 years and a maximum of 80 years in state prison, a deal that spared her a potential death-penalty trial .
Background Information
Virzi was a PhD candidate at UC San Diego, described in coverage as weeks from completing the credential, and a longtime friend of the victims’ parents, Savannah Roberts and Ethan Katz . According to the criminal complaint, she was babysitting Leon Katz inside the parents’ apartment in the 6,000 block of Walnut Street in Pittsburgh’s Shadyside neighborhood while the parents took the baby’s twin brother to UPMC Children’s Hospital for an injury to his genitals — an injury police later concluded Virzi herself had caused . A doctor who reviewed the case told detectives the injuries sustained by both twins were “consistent with having been sustained as a result of child abuse,” calling them “inflicted injuries that are not natural and not accidental” .
The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation
Pleaded guilty. Virzi admitted to killing Leon Katz and injuring his twin brother, pleading guilty to third-degree homicide and to injuring the other infant. She initially claimed innocence through a lawyer; the confession came later, in a 13-hour interrogation. The plea is a conviction, entered in open court with a 35-to-80-year sentence .
After Leon’s death, Virzi told detectives she had long carried what she called an uncontrollable urge to hurt children. “From a very, very young age, I don’t know what it is, but I always had this urge – almost like a compulsion I can’t control – to hurt kids,” she said, according to the confession prosecutors cited . She claimed Leon was hurt after she left him alone in a bouncer seat to get a baby bottle and returned to find he had fallen; the six-week-old in fact suffered a severe skull fracture and several brain bleeds, shown on a CT scan as a fracture to the left side of his head, that killed him .
“So when I was alone with (Leon), I shook him a couple times – hard. And I dropped him a couple times – hard,” Virzi told a detective in the interrogation, also admitting she flipped the infant upside down onto a bathroom floor . “Something just came over me. I couldn’t control it. I’m telling you this because I can’t keep lying about it,” she said; at the end of the 13-hour interview she also admitted to hurting Leon’s twin brother . Prosecutors said the deal was made in part because the family did not want to endure a trial over the death of their son .
Public Reaction and Consequences
Allegheny County Deputy District Attorney Emma Schoedel called it “a horrific case in which Virzi used her trusted relationship with the Roberts/Katz family to place herself in a situation where she could commit her horrendous acts,” noting the family had “continued to endure crushing emotional pain and grief” throughout the prosecution; the DA’s office said that while it “was committed to pursuing this case to trial,” it agreed to the deal after continued consultation with the family and “considering the best interest of the community and its protection” . A Pittsburgh police officer who responded to the home told The Daily Mail he was disappointed in the deal — “To go from murder-one to this? It’s pretty amazing. We know she did it. She confessed to it” . Virzi did not speak during the plea hearing; her defense attorney, Tina Miller, told the court, “No words of apology would be sufficient” .
Current Status
Virzi pleaded guilty on October 28, 2026, to third-degree homicide in Leon Katz’s death and to injuring his twin brother, and has been ordered to serve 35 to 80 years in state prison . She had faced a potential death sentence had she been convicted of first-degree murder at trial, an outcome the plea forecloses . The sentence is final at the trial-court level; any appeal would be her attorney’s next decision, and none has been announced.
Impact on Their Career/Life
The doctorate Virzi was weeks away from earning now sits beside a 35-to-80-year prison term, and the case ended any prospect of the academic career her studies pointed toward . For the Roberts/Katz family, the plea closed the prosecution without a trial but left the record of what she admitted: that she shook, dropped and flipped a six-week-old she had been trusted to watch, and caused the injuries to both twins . The deal’s terms — murder-one exposure traded for a guaranteed sentence — are what the officer’s “murder-one to this” complaint, and the family’s choice not to relive the case at trial, now hang on .